Chapter 1

Already Gone

We can now identify the real answers as well as the causes affecting young people who leave the church.

Guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly
and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is
falsely called “knowledge”—which some have professed and
thus gone astray from the faith. Grace be with you. (1 Tim. 6:20–21)

I dare you. I dare you to try it this Sunday. Look to the right, and
look to the left. While the pastor delivers his message, while the worship
team sings their songs, while the youth pastor gives his announcements,
look to the right and look to the left. Look at the children and look at
the teens around you. Many of them will be familiar faces. They are the
faces of your friends’ sons and daughters. They are the friends that your
children bring home after youth group. They are your children . . . the
ones who have been faithfully following you to church for years.

Now, imagine that two-thirds of them have just disappeared.

That’s right, two-thirds of them—the boys and the girls, the kids
who are leaders of the school’s Bible club, the kids who sit in the back
row with their baseball caps pulled low over their eyes—imagine that
two-thirds of them have just disappeared from your church.

Yes, look to the left and look to the right this Sunday. Put down
your church bulletin; look at those kids and imagine that two-thirds of
them aren’t even there. Why?

Because they are already gone.

It’s time to wake up and see the tidal wave washing away the foundation of your church. The numbers are in—and they don’t look good.
From across Christendom the reports are the same: A mass exodus is
underway. Most youth of today will not be coming to church tomorrow.
Nationwide polls and denominational reports are showing that the
next generation is calling it quits on the traditional church. And it’s
not just happening on the nominal fringe; it’s happening at the core of
the faith.

Is that just a grim prediction? Is that just the latest arm-twisting
from reactionary conservatives who are trying to instill fear into the
parents and the teachers of the next generation? No, it’s not just a
prediction. It’s a reality—as we will document clearly from commissioned professional and statistically valid research later in this
book. In fact, it’s already happening . . . just like it did in England;
it’s happening here in North America. Now. Like the black plagues
that nearly wiped out the general population of Europe, a spiritual
black plague has almost killed the next generation of European believers. A few churches are surviving. Even fewer are thriving. The
vast majority are slowly dying. It’s a spiritual epidemic, really. A wave
of spiritual decay and death has almost entirely stripped a continent
of its godly heritage, and now the same disease is infecting North
America.

Many of us saw it coming but didn’t want to admit it. After all,
our churches looked healthy on the surface. We saw bubbling Sunday
schools and dynamic youth ministries. As parents and grandparents
we appreciatively graced the doors of the church, faithfully dragging
our kids with us, as our ages pushed into the 40s and 50s and beyond.
But a vacuum was forming: there were the college students who no
longer showed up for the Sunday worship service, the newly married
couple that never came back after the honeymoon. . . . Sure, there were
exceptions and we were grateful for their dedication. For the most part,
however, we saw that the 20- and 30-somethings from our congregations were increasingly AWOL. To be honest, none of us really wanted
to admit it, did we? And so we began to justify to ourselves that maybe
it wasn’t happening at all.

Recent and irrefutable statistics are forcing us to face the truth. Respected pollster George Barna was one of the first to put numbers to the
epidemic. Based on interviews with 22,000 adults and over 2,000 teenagers in 25 separate surveys, Barna unquestionably quantified the seriousness of the situation: six out of ten 20-somethings who were involved
in a church during their teen years are already gone.1 Despite strong
levels of spiritual activity during the teen years, most 20-somethings
disengage from active participation in the Christian faith during their
young adult years—and often beyond that. Consider these findings:

Nearly 50% of teens in the United States regularly attend
church-related services or activities.

More than three-quarters talk about their faith with their
friends.

Three out of five teens attend at least one youth group meeting at a church during a typical three-month period.

That’s all well and good, but do these numbers stand the test of
time? Is the involvement of churched children and teens continuing
into young adulthood? Unfortunately not. Not even close. The Barna
research is showing that religious activity in the teen years does not
translate into spiritual commitment as individuals move into their 20s
and 30s (and our own research, you are about to discover, will illuminate you with reasons as to why this occurs).

Most of them are pulling away from church, are spending less
time alone studying their Bibles, are giving very little financially to
Christian causes, are ceasing to volunteer for church activities, and
are turning their backs on Christian media such as magazines, radio, and television. What does this look like numerically for today’s
20-somethings?

61% of today’s young adults who were regular church attendees are now “spiritually disengaged.” They are not actively attending church, praying, or reading their Bibles.

20% of those who were spiritually active during high school
are maintaining a similar level of commitment.

19% of teens were never reached by the Christian community, and they are still disconnected from the Church or
any other Christian activities.

Shortly after Barna blew the whistle on the problem, individual
denominations and churches began to take an honest look at what
was happening as their children and teens began disappearing into the
young adult years. Their findings confirmed the trends that Barna had
found. Dozens of groups have looked at the issue from slightly different angles. Each study yields slightly different results, but their conclusions are unanimously startling. For example, when the Southern
Baptist Convention researched the problem, they discovered that more
than two-thirds of young adults who attended a Protestant church for
at least a year in high school stopped attending for at least a year between the ages of 18 and 22.3

Twentysomethings struggle to stay active in Christian faith.

20% churched as teen, spiritually active at age 29

61% churched as teen, disengaged during twenties

19% never churched as teen, still unconnected

Source: The Barna Group, LTD 2006

There are exceptions, of course. Here and there we find a smattering of churches with vibrant participation from the 20-something
age group. In some cities, we are seeing congregations develop that
are made up almost exclusively of people from this age group. But unfortunately, these are the exceptions and not the rule. The trends that
we are seeing can no longer be ignored. The epidemic is a reality. The
abandoned church buildings of Europe are really just buildings, yet
they are graphic symbols—warnings to those of us who are seeing
the same trends in our local congregations: we are one generation away
from the evaporation of church as we know it. Slowly but certainly the
church of the future is headed toward the morgue and will continue to
do so—unless we come to better understand what is happening and
implement a clear, biblical plan to circumvent it.

The trends are known; more and more are finding out about them—but the vital question concerns what is the root problem of why this
is happening. We need to know why if we are going to formulate possible solutions.

Who, Why, and What?

I began traveling and speaking in the United States in the 1980s.
As an Australian, it didn’t take long before I felt I had a good feeling
for the pulse of American Christianity . . . and I saw some tremendous needs. At the time, America could rightly be labeled the greatest
Christian nation on earth, the center of the economic world—and
although the Church was equipped with nearly every conceivable tool
and luxury for developing and expressing its faith—I could see that
the Church was in great need.

Since moving to the United States in 1987, I have spoken in hundreds of different churches from many denominations, numerous Bible colleges, seminaries, and Christian conferences on American soil.
I have talked with the pastors; I’ve listened to those in the congregations; I have experienced “worship” in almost every conceivable style
and form. The ministry of Answers in Genesis is deeply committed
to the American church. In fact, the faltering health of the Church in
the greatest Christian nation on earth is what motivated my wife and
me to move our family to this country in the first place. My wife and
I testify that God called us as missionaries to America—particularly
the American Church—to call it back to the authority of the Word of
God beginning in Genesis.

The Bible calls the Church “the Body of Christ.” Today, over 20
years after our move, the statistics prove that His body is bleeding profusely. The next generation of believers is draining from the churches,
and it causes me great personal and professional concern. I’ve sat in
the grand, but vacant, churches of Europe. I know where this is headed. Where Europe is today spiritually, America will be tomorrow—and for the same reasons, if the Church does not recognize where the
foundational problem lies and address it.

When I began to seriously ponder Barna’s numbers, naturally I
wanted to find out more. For help, I called on a trusted and respected
supporter of Answers in Genesis. As the chairman of America’s Research Group, and as a leading marketing research and business analyst expert, Britt Beemer specializes in studying human behavior. Over
the decades he has conducted dozens and dozens of surveys for leading
corporations as well as small businesses. He analyzes the marketplace
and the clientele, and makes recommendations that keep the companies excelling in a competitive world. When we were considering
building the Creation Museum, we asked Britt if we could reasonably
dream of 250,000 people visiting each year. Britt did his research and
predicted that 400,000 people would visit the museum in the first year!
He was wrong by two days. (The 400,000th visitor entered the museum
363 days after we opened.) Needless to say, when we had questions
about the epidemic of people leaving church, we turned to him for
answers.

Our goal was simple: We wanted to know who was leaving, why
they were leaving, and what (if anything) could be done about it. To
that end, Britt and his America’s Research Group initiated a qualified
study with probing questions to get powerful insight into the epidemic
the Church is facing. To get to the core of the issues, his team studied
only those whom we are most concerned about: every person in our
sample said they attended church every week or nearly every week when
they were growing up, but never or seldom go today.

We selected those between 20 and 30 who once attended conservative and “evangelical” churches. We wanted to look at the churches
that claim to be Bible-believing congregations with Bible-preaching
pastors. According to Barna, about 6 percent of people in their 20s and
30s can be considered “evangelical.” This is about the same as the number of teenagers (5 percent).4 The results from Britt’s research would
undoubtedly have been more drastic if we had considered more liberal
congregations. We deliberately skewed the research toward conservatives so that we could all understand that whatever problems showed
up would be much worse for the church population in general.

After 20,000 phone calls, with all the raw data in hand, Britt began to analyze the numbers. The things he discovered—as well as the
things he didn’t discover—began to shed light (in a quite astonishing
way) on this monumental problem facing the future of Christianity.

The sample included:

1,000 individuals from coast to coast

balanced according to population and gender

with just over half being aged 25–29

with under half being aged 20–24

First of all, he didn’t discover anything abnormal about the group
as a whole. There weren’t an unusual number of homeschoolers,
or secular school kids, who were leaving. There wasn’t a significant
number of females compared to males that had decided to leave. In
other words, the 60 percent plus of the evangelical kids who choose to
leave the church look pretty much like the 40 percent who decide to
stay—at least on the outside. The breakdown of those who left really
fits the profile of the evangelical population in general.

So at first, the who question didn’t seem to give us many answers.
So then, why? Why did they leave the church? When we asked them
this open-ended question, we got an earful.

The top 10 reasons were:

12% Boring service

12% Legalism

11% Hypocrisy of leaders

10% Too political

9% Self-righteous people

7% Distance from home

6% Not relevant to personal growth

6% God would not condemn to hell

5% Bible not relevant/not practical

5% Couldn’t find my preferred denomination in the area

At first, we were surprised (and a little disappointed) that there
wasn’t a single reason. It would have been nice to find a single identifiable virus somewhere. How simple it would have been to stereotype
the whole group and point out one germ that had been causing the
sickness to spread. But the numbers didn’t say that. A single identifiable
culprit didn’t appear.

Other researchers have come to similar conclusions. When
LifeWay did their research for the Southern Baptist Convention, 97
percent of the “dropouts” listed one or more specific life-change issues
as a reason they left church. The most frequent reason they gave for
leaving church was almost an indifferent shrug of the shoulders: “I
simply wanted a break from church” (27 percent). The transition into
college and adulthood also affected many: “I moved to college and
stopped attending church” (25 percent), and “work responsibilities
prevented me from attending” (23 percent). Others simply “moved
too far away from the church to continue attending” (22 percent).5
In all honesty, these kinds of results just seemed too shallow for us
at Answers in Genesis. And they seemed too superficial to Britt as
well. We have a massive epidemic on our hands, and researchers
seemed to be content with answers that sounded like “I just didn’t
feel very good,” or “I wasn’t there because I chose to be someplace
else.” Too many researchers accept simple, superficial answers. They
acknowledge that there is a massive shift taking place in the spiritual
lives of young adults, but when it comes to really figuring out what’s
going on, they kind of throw up their hands and sigh, “I guess that’s
just the way it is!”

End of story? Hardly. This is precisely why we teamed up with
an expert like Britt Beemer who probes, and probes, and probes until
he finds the right reasons. We found the real reasons, though some of
them will shake many churches to their very core.

Never content with the easy answers that people give to justify their
behavior, Britt is an expert in consumer behavior who taps into their
minds as he finds out what people really believe in order to reveal what
is driving their behavior. Until Answers in Genesis commissioned this
study, never before had this type of research been conducted—and
our research was formulated to not just deeply probe what people believe but answer the questions in regard to WHY people believe what
they do. We can now identify the real answers as well as the causes affecting young people who leave the church.

As Britt studied his data, it was obvious that multiple issues are
behind the exodus from church. The why? question would prove to
be more complicated than many expected. But soon, as the numbers
became more clear, patterns emerged, assumptions were destroyed,
and quirky findings surfaced. One of the most important and startling
findings turned out not to answer the why? question, but rather the
when? question.

Of these thousand 20 to 29-year-old
evangelicals who attended church
regularly but no longer do so:

95% of them
attended church
regularly during
their elementary and
middle school years

55% attended church
regularly during high
school

Of the thousand,
only 11% were still
going to church
during their early
college years

I think this is one of the most revealing and yet challenging statistics
in the entire survey—and something we didn’t expect. Most people
assume that students are lost in college. We’ve always been trying to
prepare our kids for college (and I still think that’s a critical thing to
do, of course), but it turns out that only 11 percent of those who have
left the Church were still attending during the college years. Almost 90
percent of them were lost in middle school and high school. By the time
they got to college they were already gone! About 40 percent are leaving
the Church during elementary and middle school years! Most people
assumed that elementary and middle school is a fairly neutral environment where children toe the line and follow in the footsteps of their
parents’ spirituality. Not so. I believe that over half of these kids were
lost before we got them into high school! Whatever diseases are fueling
the epidemic of losing our young people, they are infecting our students
much, much earlier than most assumed. Let me say this again:

We are losing many more people by middle school and many more by
high school than we will ever lose in college.

Many parents will fork out big bucks to send these students to
Christian colleges, hoping to protect them in their faith. But the fact is,
they’re already gone. They were lost while still in the fold. They were
disengaging while they were still sitting in the pews. They were preparing their exit while they were faithfully attending youth groups and
Sunday schools.

What a reminder to parents (and Christian leaders) to do exactly
what God’s Word instructs us to do—to “train up a child in the way
he should go . . .” (Prov. 22:6). And further, “These words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently
to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house,
when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up”
(Deut. 6:6–7; (NKJV)). What a reminder to teach children from when
they are born—and a reminder to be diligent in providing the right
sort of training/curricula, etc., for children.

Sadly, I think many see children’s programs as entertainment,
teaching Bible stories, and so on, but when they get older we need
to think about preparing them somehow for college—but as our research showed, by then they are already gone! For most, it was basically too late!

This topic regarding when we begin to lose our kids is where the
study began to get very interesting and very illuminating. For example:

Those who no
longer believe
that all of
the accounts
and stories in
the Bible are
true:

39.8% first had
doubts in middle
school

43.7% first had their
doubts in high school

10.6% had
their
first doubts
during college

Clearly, there is a slightly delayed reaction going on. The doubts
come first, followed shortly by departure. Students didn’t begin doubting in college, they simply departed by college. Again, if you look
around in your church today, two-thirds of those who are sitting
among us have already left in their hearts, it will only take a couple
years before their bodies are absent as well.

The Beemer study has a tremendous amount to offer the churches,
the pastors, the parents, and the researchers who are sincerely looking
into this problem. Britt’s study didn’t look just at behavior; he looked at
belief. By making correlations between those beliefs and the behavior
and intentions of those who have left the Church, the veil was lifted,
powerful new insights were revealed, and very surprising results were
illuminated. In the pages ahead we will give you the highlights of some
of these numbers. But brace yourself, because in many instances the
results are shocking, and they point a finger at many well-intentioned,
firmly established programs and traditions of churches that are utterly
failing the children who faithfully attend every Sunday morning.

You will need to swallow hard and be prepared to consider things
very carefully; Be ready to give up long-held, cherished notions in regard to certain church programs of which perhaps you would never
have considered the slightest possibility that there was such a serious
problem as this research clearly showed.

First, we will investigate key aspects of the epidemic, including:

the effects of Sunday school

the two different kinds of kids who are leaving the Church
and why it’s so important to know the difference

why the Church has lost its value and is now considered
irrelevant

Second, we will investigate the solutions that are within our grasp:

how to defend the Christian faith and uphold the authority
of the Bible from the very first verse

what it means (and doesn’t mean) to live by the Bible

the revolution that is reclaiming “church” in this culture

Along the way the investigation will be spiced up with a variety of
fascinating findings regarding the following:

music

friends

unbiblical church traditions

teaching

beliefs about Genesis

If you are a parent, a pastor, or a Christian educator, then this research is for you. Or maybe you are one of the millions of students who
are thinking about leaving the Church or have already done so. If so,
I challenge you to let the numbers speak for themselves and then be
ready to allow God to use you in new ways to make a difference for the
sake of the next generation and the Church. Even though the results
were obtained in America, because it has had the greatest Christian
influence in the world and has been an enormous influence on the
world (Christian literature, missionaries, etc.), it is likely that such research would show similar (at best) or much worse results in other
countries.

Yes, I challenge you. This Sunday, look to the left and then look to
the right. According to our research, two-thirds of the children and
teens you see will be gone in a matter of years. What can be done about
it? Plenty, as you will soon see!

Britt’s Bit: The AiG-ARG Connection

On behalf of Ken Ham, I want to thank you for picking up this
book. I make my living generating numbers and statistics, and they
are an important part of my personal ministry. When numbers and
statistics are interpreted correctly they mean something. They aren’t
just arbitrary measurements for things that don’t matter. Numbers do
matter. They represent things that are real, that are measurable, that
can be observed, and (in many cases) that can be changed with the
right remedies. That’s what America’s Research Group is all about. At
ARG we draw conclusions that are meaningful to our clients. We are
behavioral scientists who study human behavior. ARG provides each
client a foundation built on practical, useful information that ensures
their ongoing success.

That’s why I am such a firm believer in Answers in Genesis. Not
only is their ministry important, but AiG is a reminder of what God
can do through one person who steps out in faith and allows God to
use them to defend and proclaim the truth. Ken moved his family to
the United States more than 20 years ago, having started a ministry out
of the trunk of his car and a few cardboard boxes in his house. I don’t
think anyone would have believed (particularly Ken) what God had in
store for a ministry of such humble beginnings.

Today, the Answers in Genesis website gets millions of visitors per
year. Tens of thousands of resources (books, DVDs, curricula, magazines, etc.) move through AiG’s warehouse year after year. A small
army of trained speakers are reaching tens of thousands of people face-to-face on every continent on the globe except Antarctica. (As far as I
know, no one has volunteered to go there quite yet!)

I love keeping track of the AiG ministry and what people say about
it. I’ve been tracking public opinion religiously (pun intended), and
I have a deep desire to protect and to equip this ministry. When the
Creation Museum opened, it created a national media tsunami, and at
least one-third of the comments voiced about the ministry were clearly
negative. The naysayers had their day, but they didn’t last. Today, only
1/20th of the comments about the museum are negative. I think that
is an amazing accomplishment. As I projected, 400,000 people came
through those doors in the first year.

I make my living studying human behavior and attitudes statistically, which gives me a unique viewpoint of how and why people act
the way they do. I sincerely invite you to come along with my friend
and ministry cohort Ken Ham as he takes you on a personal tour
through my numbers. I’ll be throwing in my “bit” on a regular basis,
giving you my take on the statistics and their importance. As you begin to understand the trends of the past, and see where the Church is at
present, you will discover highly practical action points that will make
a difference in the future. I believe that if you get a handle on a few of
the numbers that describe what is happening in the Church today, you
will see the potential for change that resides within you as a pastor, a
parent, or a Christian educator. And that’s important. The next generation is counting on us.

Already Gone

Statistics reveal a huge disconnect taking place between our children and their church experience. Nationwide polls and denominational reports are showing that the next generation is calling it quits on the traditional church. And it’s not just happening on the nominal fringe; it’s happening at the core of the faith. In the first scientific study of its kind, the “Beemer Report” reveals startling facts discovered through 20,000 phone calls and detailed surveys of a thousand 20–29 year olds who used to attend evangelical churches on a regular basis, but have since left it behind. The results are shocking.

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Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus on providing answers to questions about the Bible—particularly the book of Genesis—regarding key issues such as creation, evolution, science, and the age of the earth.